Is blender more superior with the node editor then without it?
For Cycles materials most of the node editor's functionality can be achieved in the material tab. What is missing is the creation and editing functionality of node groups. Also, working in the node editor is much less confusing than using the visualization in the material tab.

For Blender Internal's node-materials, node textures and the compositor there is no equivalent in another part of Blender. If you removed the node editor, you could not use these features at all.